As the 2015 deadline to meet all the MDGS draws near, many are asking what comes next, including a recently appointed 26 member panel [1]of development and political big-shots. The high-level panel, which met last Tuesday for the first time, faces huge pressure working on a post-2015 “development vision.” 'Stakes are high[2],' says Paige McClanahan in an insightful post on the Poverty Matters blog. And according to Claire Melamed, it’s still in the 'Christmas tree territory[3]' but there are ways to deal with the emerging agenda and narrow down the goals. Read her post here[4].

Martin Ravallion asks a pressing question in a new Policy Research Working paper: Against what standards should we judge the developing world's overall performance against poverty going forward? The paper, 'Benchmarking Global Poverty[5],’ proposes two measures, each with both "optimistic" and "ambitious" targets for 2022, 10 years from the time of writing. The first measure is absolute consumption poverty, as judged by what "poverty" means in the poorest countries. The second is a new relative poverty measure, embracing social inclusion needs consistently with national poverty lines. The question was asked by World Bank President Kim Yong Kim, so it should spark some lively discussion.

Kanayo F. Nwanze, President of IFAD, has a post on Project Syndicate on ‘Small Farms, Large Benefits,’ which makes the case for empowering smallholder farmers as a means of bolstering economic growth and contributing to prosperity. Read it here[6].

Speaking of prosperity, an interesting interactive infographic [7]on the Economist shows “how unequal the spread of wealth and increase in income” is in India.

In his syndicated column, Paul Krugman writes[8] about how deficits may not be as serious a problem as unemployment and hardship on the neediest, since the latter can stymy recovery.

As a final note, the World Development Report 2013: Jobs will be launched on Monday, Oct 1 at 7 PM EDT. To learn about the report’s main findings and messages visit our blog next week and also visit: http://www.worldbank.org/wdr2013[9].